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CPS Venice Italy

Just a year ago I moved to Italy to start paintball business and develop the sport paintball. I built new fields, arranged pro-schools, organized tournaments, taught our young players and took care of our team, Empire Venice. After a successful year, when we decided to enter into the SPL in Millennium Series the new question popped up… how to get a team ready for the semi professional league? We urgently needed the tournament experience and learn how to play under that pressure. At the same time I heard that the Grand Tour wouldn’t exist anymore. So after some short conversations with one of GT organizers – Wolfgang, a new European series was formed! All of my life I have been waiting to become a champion or to help prepare others to reach that level of success.

So the name of the new series was crystal clear and so we started. We found a young talented designer, which created the most stylish website on the market (www.championspaintballseries.com). We started talking with the teams and just after two months we had around 40 teams that expressed an interest in playing the CPS.

Venice.

This event in GT was always very good. All teams liked to play here. Northern Italy is one of the most beautiful parts of Italy with great food, friendly Italians and sunny weather almost all of the time. In Venice we found the perfect location and I know that here I would have the best field in Italy. It is now the home field of Empire Venice and anyone that wants to have the perfect team practice is welcome. The field in Milan was also built and set up by me—it’s got turf, lights, lovely place near the lake and changing rooms. That leaves our location in Austria and Padova, which is very close to the city. So that’s it 4 events Venice, Vienna, Padova, and Milan.

Venice is a legendary city and to put even a tent I your own yard requires permission and that permission took a while to get. So we had to put together this event in just five days! But we got it done and the first event brought 23 teams. The Super League had 9 teams and League One had 14 teams.

The day started out with teams from the League One and they played a RaceTo 3 format. There were all different levels of play with each of the teams. In Italy paintball has only been legal for two years.

The early first day leaders in League One were Consilium Dei 2, United, RMG Kids and Italians Idols (Empire Venice 2 Italian squad). Just behind were Scorpions Decima Centurio plus two wildcards Flying Lions and ACT 2-3.

In the Semifinals Consilium Dei 2 played RMG Kids 3-2 and Italians Idols versus ACT 2-3. As the scores indicate all of the games were hard-fought and close, with all of the teams fighting for the first place spot! The Italians and Slovaks were battling it out in their game. The game was tied at 2-2 and for the final point and win players played one-on-one. It was the Italian Idols that got it done. In the final game for first place was CD2vs ACT. The Swiss team started fast, 1-0 for them. After the first score the Austrians played positional paintball, with long points, and it worked to their advantage as they took two points in row. CD2 took the game to overtime after tying it up and in OT they were able to put the game away.

Super League

First group were Icon, RMG Aggpb, and Extreme Neapolis. From the beginning the question was who will be first in the group, Icon or RMG? After the smoke cleared it was RMG versus Icon, with RMG winning and taking first in the group.

The second group was a bit more complicated with Empire Venice, Outrage Valence, ML Kings, Consillium Dei, and Wikingowie.

The main fight would be between Swiss team Consilium Dei Empire and Outrage from France. In the First game CD Empire didn’t shoot well off the break and three times in row the French made it to the snake. They took a 3-0 lead. CD Empire battled back and got the match even at 3-3. After a long two-on-two, CD Empire went inside of the snake and got the point 4-3.

Semifinals Icon Versus Cosilium Dei & EMPIRE Versus RMG

Cyrill, the captain of Icon had this to say about the match:

“We will have to go through the 2011 winner of the SPL to reach the final game. We actually would have preferred to play Empire Venice in the semifinals because CD had game plans we didn’t really understand. Basically they decided to cross the field. They even decided not to run anymore on the dorito side. To sum up, they were not taking any risks off the break but they knew they really had to shoot people off the, break otherwise they would be in serious trouble.

The first three points we ran up the dorito side and we got shot every time. That forced us to lpay a bit more conservative. At this point they were leading 2-1 and while we tried to adapt to their game plans, we lost the fourth point. By the fifth point we really adapted well and won the point and the score was 3-2. The next point ended up in a two-on-two situation, as a player from Consilium ran all the way up on the dorito side, trying to bunker one of our player on the fifty dorito. The action was a little bit messy, they shot each other pretty much at the same time, but the refs didn’t say so; they applied a one-for-one penalty on us giving the win to Consilium Dei.“

Consilium Dei vs. Empire – First place match up.

This was the most intresting match as history was being repeated. One year ago in Venice, Consilium easily beat Empire in preliminaries and then lost to them in the finals . Empire totally vhanged their strategy for the finals and took an early 3-0 lead.

However, Consilium the winner of SPL in 2011, was a very expirienced team. On the field the drama unfolded. Consilium started playing well, keeping zones and shooting players on the break. After scoring three stright points of their own, CD got the game to overtime. Tough gun-fight and trade-outs on the snake left a two-on-one for Empire. Point over, game over. The title of the fisrt Champions Paintball Series went to a well deserving Empire Venice!

Final words from the event

At the awards ceremony trophies from the sponsors of the event, Safer and DYE, were given out. We received a great deal of postive feedbacks after the event. Thanks very much to Natasha Enrico, Wolfgang, Filippo and all his familly for the great job you did. Thanks to all our sponsors for the support; Planet Eclipse, GI Sportz, Safer, Draxxus, Aggpb, Idol, Enjoy Paintball Cube and Manta. See everybody at our other events in Vienna, Padova, and Milan.